Marxism and ecology

Clearly there is a
growing recognition on the left that capitalism’s degradation of
nature is in imminent danger of causing civilizational collapse.
However, given the tragic loss of ecological thinking suffered by
Marxism for much of the 20th century, and not only in the cancerous
form of Stalinism, but with Trotskyism and Cliffism too, this
‘greening’ of the left is bound to be highly contradictory.

Undoubtedly, there are
many comrades on the left, who, like us, have rediscovered the
extraordinarily rich heritage of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. As
shown by writers such as John Bellamy Foster (Marx’s Ecology
2000) and Paul Burckett (Marx and Nature 1999) the Marx-Engels
team took a keen interest in the science of their day and developed
profound insights into environmental problems. In Capital Marx
famously urged the future communist society to take care of the earth
like “boni patres familias” (good heads of the household)
and “hand it down to succeeding generations” in an “improved
condition”.

On the other hand,
there remains a strong suspicion that many leftwing sects are simply
jumping onto another bandwagon in a desperate attempt to gain
recruits. This involves a crude adaptation to green ideology, which
in the last analysis reflects the concerns, methods and limitations
of petty bourgeois radicalism.

The working class
presents the only viable alternative to the destructive reproduction
of capital. First as a countervailing force within capitalism: its
own logic pulls against that of capital. The political economy of the
working class brings with it not only higher wages and shorter hours.
It is responsible for health services, social security systems,
pensions, universal primary and secondary education … and measures
that protect the environment. Wealth, for the working class, is not
merely about the accumulation and consumption of an ever greater
range of commodities.Besides being of capitalism, the working
class is uniquely opposed to capitalism. The political economy of the
working class more than challenges capital. As we argue, it points
beyond - to the total reorganisation of society and, with that, the
ending of humanity’s strained, brutalised and crisis-ridden
relationship with nature.

Socialism and communism
do not raise the workers to the position where they own the planet.
Mimicking the delusions associated with capitalism - as witnessed
under bureaucratic socialism in the Soviet Union - brings constant
disappointment, ecological degradation and the certain revenge of
nature. Humanity can only be the custodian.

Marx was amongst the
first to theorise human dependence on nature and the fact that
humanity and nature co-evolves. He warned, however, that a metabolic
“rift” had occurred which threatened the nature-imposed
conditions of human existence. Capitalism crowds vast numbers into
polluted, soulless, crime-ridden concrete jungles. Simultaneously,
the ever bigger farms of capitalist agriculture denude nature with
mono-crops, the ripping up of hedgerows and, as highlighted by Rachel
Carson back in the early 1960s, the chemical death meted out to
“birds, mammals, fishes, and indeed practically every form of
wildlife”.

The Marx-Engels team
wanted to re-establish an intimate connection between town and
country, agriculture and industry, and rationally redistribute the
population. Doubtless, this programme has little practical relevance
to capitalist society, which, because of its short-termism and manic
fixation on generating profits, is incapable of carrying through such
far-reaching measures. But under conditions of socialism and
communism such ideas will surely be put into practice.

Articles from the Weekly Worker

Series
on Malthusianism (2006)

In
the first of three articles Jack Conrad argues that the global
ecological crisis cannot be explained by crude overpopulation
theories. Each social formation has its own laws, including laws of
population

Reviews and interviews

The
book Marx's ecology -
materialism and nature by
John Bellamy Foster does much to reclaim a lost tradition of
ecological thinking in Marxism. As CPGB comrades in London draw
towards to the end of an extensive series of seminars based on this
work, Mark Fischer spoke to the author about the relationship of red
and green